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Walking Dead: Days Gone Bye
| next = "Guts" }} "Days Gone Bye" is the pilot episode of the American television series The Walking Dead. The episode was directed and written by series creator Frank Darabont and first aired on AMC on Sunday, October 31st, 2010. "Days Gone Bye" follows the journey of King County sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes as he awakens to a world that has been overrun by zombies. Traveling across the state of Georgia, Rick finds other survivors of the zombie plague and together they struggle to survive in a world that no longer makes any sense to them. Synopsis The Present Rick Grimes is a former sheriff for the King County Sheriff's Office in King County, Georgia. Driving police cruiser 134, he stops at an intersection on Cascade Palmetto Highway. As he is nearly out of gas, he gets out and walks across the street with a gas can, passing several overturned vehicles along the way. He walks through what used to be a survival camp, which had clearly been abandoned. Arriving at the filling station, he sees a hand-written sign on a support beam that reads "No gas". Rick hears the sound of something shuffling about nearby. Peering underneath a vehicle, he sees a pair of dirty feet moving slowly. Rick circles around and sees a little girl in a tattered bath robe walking away from him. Calling out to her, he identifies himself as a police man. When she turns around however, it becomes clear to him that she is one of the undead. She advances on him, forcing Rick to shoot her in the forehead. The Past & Rick - ready to dispense some justice.]] Rick Grimes and his partner and best friend Shane Walsh sit inside of a police cruiser talking. Shane gives Rick a "sermon" explaining the difference between men and women, but mostly uses this as an opportunity to complain about his girlfriend. Afterward, he asks Rick about how things are going with his wife, Lori. Rick tells him about a fight the two got into the night before and goes on to say how this might affect their young son, Carl. Suddenly the cruiser's radio cracks to life, an APB from neighboring Linden County reports a high-speed pursuit in progress involving two armed suspects. Rick and Shane dump their food and rush to the scene, where they lay down a spike strip and meet up with their co-workers, Lambert Kendal and Leon Basset. As they all wait for the car, the youngest officer, Basset, muses about their chances of getting on a police chase reality show. Rick tells him to focus, and worry about having a round in his gun chamber and the safety off. Basset sheepishly checks his Glock 17 while Shane suggests that it would be "kinda cool gettin' on one of them shows." is in bad shape.]] The car approaches, pursued by two more cruisers containing the Linden County Sheriff's Department officers. The vintage car with the suspects inside speeds over the spike strip, shredding the tires. The driver loses control and the vehicle flips off the road, rolling several times before coming to a rough stop upside down in a field. "Holy shit," mutters Shane, his Mossberg 590 shotgun cocked as the officers descend on the vehicle. Rick carefully approaches the overturned car. A man emerges from the vehicle and immediately starts shooting at the officers. Rick yells at him to drop his 9mm SIG-Sauer P228 pistol, but the man shoots directly at Rick and hits him in the chest. Shane kills the gunman as Rick falls to the ground. A second man emerges from the vehicle brandishing a shotgun, but one of the Linden County officers shoots him in the chest and kills him. "I'm alright!" Rick shouts, winded, the gunman having shot his Kevlar vest. Shane approaches Rick as he pulls himself off the ground. "Shane, you do not tell Lori that happened! Ever!" Rick commands Shane after the firefight. His back turned, he fails to notice a third gunman crawling free from the overturned vehicle. The man fires a .45 M1911A1 pistol and hits Rick in the side, where his vest does not protect him. He falls to the ground bleeding, and Shane kills the third man before rushing to Rick's aid. He commands Rick to stay with him, barking at Leon to call an ambulance. Awakening Shane delivers flowers to Rick in the hospital, but Rick isn't fully conscious. Sometime later, Rick awakens and responds to Shane's presence, but quickly discovers that Shane is no longer there. The flowers have wilted and died, the beep of the machines has stopped, and the clock has stopped; the room is empty. Weak, dehydrated and alone, Rick pulls himself out of bed, flops onto the floor and calls out for help — but no one comes. He stumbles into the bathroom, guzzling water directly from the tap before he heads for the door. He opens the door into a gurney that blocks the entrance to his room, but he pushes it aside and continues. The hallway is dark and disheveled, with lights flickering and wires hanging from the ceiling. He goes to the nurse's station and tries the phone: it's dead. He finds a set of matches and strikes one, looking for anything else worth taking from behind the desk. A flickering light draws his attention, and through a doorway, Rick sees the ravaged body of a nurse missing most of her skin. His eyes can't believe what he's seeing and he backs away, confused and afraid. Further down the hall, the walls are covered in blood and riddled with bullet holes. A double door leading into the cafeteria has been chained shut, a message scrawled across in black paint: "DON'T OPEN/DEAD INSIDE." A woman's hands, her fingernails dirty and broken, reach through the cracks and fiddle with the padlock and chains. Terrified, Rick stumbles backwards. He tries the elevator but it's dead, so he exits through a heavy door into a dark stairwell that reeks of rotting flesh. He chokes on the smell as he lumbers down the stairs, lighting matches until he finds the exit. A door opens to the back of the hospital and the loading bay. When Rick's eyes adjust to the sunlight he sees hundreds of decayed, rancid, fly-covered bodies wrapped in sheets and arranged in rows and piles. He leaves the hospital and stumbles up a hill. There's a military helicopter, sandbags, and other signs of a military cordon, but everything has been abandoned. He wanders down the road in his hospital gown, spotting an overturned bicycle in a park. As he reaches for it, a mutilated woman — badly decayed, her legs and lips missing — turns and reaches for him, pathetically moaning in hunger. Apart from the woman's hands reaching from inside the cafeteria, this is Rick's first view of a walker. Startled, Rick falls over but regains himself a moment later, mounts the bike, and hastily speeds away. Encounter with Morgan .]] Rick arrives at his home to find the front door ajar and the house deserted. Sobbing on the floor, he calls out for Lori and Carl, questioning if any of this is real or if he's dreaming. He heads back outside the house and sits on the steps, then spots a man stumbling down the road and slowly lifts his hand to wave and get his attention. But a young boy creeps up from behind and hits Rick across the face with a shovel. "Carl, I found you", Rick mutters. "Daddy I got this sumbitch! I'm gonna smack him dead!" the boy screams. The boy's father, Morgan Jones, approaches the stumbling man and shoots him in the head, then walks toward Rick and points the .38 Taurus Model 85 revolver in his face. "What's that bandage for?" Morgan asks him, cocking the gun and telling him, "You tell me, or I will kill you." Rick passes out. He wakes up with his arms and legs tied to a bed. Morgan's son, Duane, stands guard with a baseball bat. "Did you get bit?" Morgan asks Rick stiffly, having changed his bandages though Rick's gun-shot wound has mostly healed. "Just shot, as far as I know," Rick says. Morgan checks his forehead and says if he had "the fever" it would have killed him by now, so he sets him free of the bedposts with a switchblade and offers him a seat at their dinner table. They have canned beans. Rick recognizes the home they're in as his neighbors', Fred and Cindy Drake's, forcing Morgan to admit, "It was empty when we got here." He tells Rick not to look out the window because 'they will see the light', and begins to explain the story of the Outbreak and the following months to a confused and disoriented Rick for the first time. "I never should have fired that gun today," Morgan says. "The sound draws 'em. Now they're all over the street." Rick accuses Morgan of shooting a man in cold blood. "It was a walker," Morgan corrects. He adds that they get more active after dark sometimes. Before they begin eating dinner, Duane insists that his father give a blessing. "Lord, please watch over us in these crazy days," Morgan says, and proceeds to explain to Rick that the man he shot would have tried to eat them. "One thing I do know, don't you get bit," Morgan says. Bites kill, he explains, and then you become one of them. "The fever burns you out. But then after a while... you come back." hangs out with Morgan.]] "Seen it happen," Duane adds solemnly. The trio talk about Rick's son, Carl, and Rick satisfies a lingering curiosity shared by Duane and Morgan as to what line of work would put someone in a position to be shot at. "Sheriff's deputy," Rick remarks. Morgan smiles and says, "Duane thought you were a bank robber." A car alarm goes off outside and they turn off the lights. Rick and Morgan peer out to the street through heavy covered windows and boarded up doors. The street is filled with walkers, drawn by the noise of the alarm. When a woman wearing a nightgown appears, Duane runs away crying. Morgan comforts his son while Rick stares at the woman through the peephole at the front door. The woman walks up the front steps, looks around, and tries the door handle. "She died in the other room on that bed," Morgan says, "I should have put her down. I just didn't have it in me. She's the mother of my child." The next morning, Rick, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans borrowed from either Morgan or Fred Drake, walks outside in a painter's mask, carrying a baseball bat. Morgan is teaching him how to kill walkers. "We're sure they're dead? I have to ask," says Rick, approaching a walker near the stoop. "They're dead." Morgan assures him. "Except for something in the brain. That's why it's gotta be the head," he says. Morgan and Duane exit the house behind Rick, approaching a walker who slowly rises from a sitting position, leaning against the fence at the edge of the front yard. Rick swings the bat repeatedly, beating the walker down until it stops moving, but quickly becomes fatigued, grasping at his still-ailing gunshot wound. After practice, Rick tells Morgan he thinks his wife and son are still alive when the trio returns to his house. He found empty drawers in the bedrooms, he explains, and the family pictures and photo albums were gone. "Photo albums," Morgan laughs, getting emotional over the memory. "My wife, same thing. There I am packing survival gear; she's grabbing photo albums." "They're in Atlanta, I bet," Duane offers. Morgan explains that the government was telling people to head to a refugee center there with military protection and food, before the broadcasts stopped. The Center for Disease Control — where they're rumored to be working on a cure — is also in Atlanta. Stocking up on weapons , but you gots ta go!"]] Rick, Morgan, and Duane head to the King County Sheriff's Department, where they luxuriate in hot showers thanks to a separate propane heating system, Morgan tells Rick that his family was headed to Atlanta amid absolute panic. "The streets weren't fit to be on," he recalls. He explains that he and his son never got to Atlanta because they got "stuck" after his wife got bit, and after she died they just stayed hunkered down at the Drake's home. Afterward, Rick packs a duffel bag with guns and gets a change of clothes — his sheriff's uniform — from his locker. He hands Morgan a rifle and some ammunition. Loading the weapons into the trunk of his cruiser, Rick prepares to set off for Atlanta. Morgan says he'll follow in a few days, once Duane has learned to shoot, so Rick hands Morgan a walkie-talkie. But it has a low battery, and he tells Morgan to turn it on every day at dawn to make contact. Morgan leaves Rick with a warning: "They may not seem like much one at a time," he says, "But in a group, all riled up and hungry? Man, you watch your ass." ? Hope you weren't attached to her.]] The farewell is interrupted when Rick spots Leon Basset, who has turned into a walker. Basset claws at the chain link fence separating them, and while Rick admits he didn't think much of the young officer, he won't leave him like this. He shoots him in the forehead with his revolver, putting him down, before he and Morgan drive away from the sheriff's department in opposite directions. Back home, Duane is covering the windows before dark, and Morgan heads up to the attic carrying Rick's rifle. He looks at old photo albums and pictures of his wife. Tearfully, he positions the rifle facing the street and begins shooting walkers. He commands Duane to stay downstairs when his son gets startled by the gun shots. "Come on, baby," he says, hoping the noise will draw his wife into view. But when she appears, he breaks down, still unable to shoot her. Rick returns to the park where he found the legless walker, and when he finds her again she reaches for him futilely, unable to attack and satiate her endless hunger. "I'm sorry this happened to you," Rick says, shooting her in the head with his revolver and putting her out of her misery before he heads back to his car. Journey to Atlanta wife your smoochin' there."]] En route to Atlanta on Highway 85, Rick sends out a broadcast on his cruiser's CB radio. In a camp outside the city with an old man perched atop an RV with a pair of binoculars, a group of survivors receives the transmission. A young blonde girl in pink rushes to the CB, but can't get a reply through. Shane, Lori, and Carl are among them, but they don't recognize Rick's voice over the garbled transmission. By the time Shane takes over the CB controls and introduces himself, Rick has left the emergency broadcast channel. Lori voices that she's been saying for a week that they should put signs up on the highway warning people away from the city, and volunteers to go on her own, but Shane argues that venturing out is too risky. Lori walks off, fuming, and Shane goes after her. "You can be pissed at me all you want; it's not gonna change anything," he tells her. Inside Lori's tent, Shane tells her that she can't run off half-cocked; that she needs to keep it together for Carl, who has lost so much already. Lori agrees, and they kiss passionately before Carl interrupts them. Lori promises him she's not going anywhere and tells her son to go finish his chores. He runs off smiling. Rick's cruiser runs out of fuel, so he abandons his car on the highway and heads out on foot with a gas can, making sure to grab the Grimes family photo he keeps above his rear-view mirror and stashing it in his jacket pocket. He approaches a farmhouse looking for gas, where he makes the grisly discovery that a man has shot his wife and committed suicide. 'GOD FORGIVE US' is written in blood on the wall. with no name..."]] Rick tries to locate the keys of the pick-up truck parked in their driveway, but finds a horse on their property instead. He saddles up and rides the rest of the way to Atlanta, but it's nothing like Morgan described it. Hundreds of burned out cars trying to leave the city have stalled out on the other side of the freeway, while the road into the city is completely deserted. Nonetheless, he continues to ride in to the devastated metropolis, with no other leads on his wife and son. He searches the streets on horseback, finding an overrun military blockade and more burned out vehicles. Two ravens peck at a dead animal. He awakens a few walkers along the way, so he and his horse speed up to a trot as he looks back to see them emerging from buses and alleys. Rick hears a helicopter pass overhead, catching the reflection in a windowed skyscraper. He tries to follow it, but leads himself and the horse straight into a horde of hundreds of walkers. The undead swarm them, toppling him as the walkers devour the horse. While the walkers are distracted, Rick scrambles underneath an abandoned tank, but more walkers come after him and grab at him from both ends. !"]] Rick shoots several of them, but more just keep coming. In desperation, he places the gun to his temple. "Lori, Carl, I'm sorry," he says — but looking up, he sees an open hatch underneath the tank and crawls inside just in time. He catches his breath and takes the gun of a zombified soldier that appears dead inside the tank. But the movement awakens him, and the soldier turns to bite Rick. Terrified, Rick shoots, and a deafening echo reverberates inside the repressed air of the tank. Disoriented, he notices that the top hatch of the tank is open. He claws his way to the top and lifts his head out to stop the ringing in his ears. He spots his bag of guns, but walkers see him. They begin climbing the tank to get at him, but Rick seals himself inside, with no idea what he'll do next. Walkers bang on the hatch, unable to get in, while others still devour the horse. Rick holds the soldier's 9mm Beretta 92FS pistol to his forehead, sweating. The tank's radio crackles. "Hey you, dumbass," a voice says. "You in the tank. Cozy in there?" Cast Starring Guest Starring Co-Starring Notes & Trivia * The Walking Dead was developed by Frank Darabont based on the series of graphic novels by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard. * "WD: Days Gone Bye" redirects to this page. * This episode is rated TV-MA. * This episode had a running time of 1½ hours with commercials (62 minutes without commercials). The regular episodes from the series run one hour each (with commercials). * This episode aired on Halloween. * Actor Steve Warren also played a walker in a church in the season two premiere, "What Lies Ahead". * Shane Walsh gives himself the nickname Reverend Shane in this episode. * Summer is the first zombie featured on ''The Walking Dead''. She is also the first child character featured in the series. * According to the Walking Dead Social Game, Summer had a father named Jon, and an uncle named Jesse, both of whom, as well as Summer's unnamed mother, are deceased. Allusions * The title of this episode is a pun on the phrase "Days gone by". The name is taken from the first issue of The Walking Dead comic book series. For the graphic novel, see Walking Dead, Volume 1: Days Gone Bye. * When Shane Walsh is talking about one of his girlfriends, he makes a reference to her using the "Exorcist voice". This is a reference to the 1973 film, The Exorcist, wherein the character of Regan MacNeil is possessed by a demon named Pazuzu and speaks in a raspy, demonic voice. * The location where Rick Grimes first encounters Summer is Cascade Palmetto Highway. * The location where Rick and Shane have the shoot-out with the criminals is Highway 18 in Linden County. Quotes * Rick Grimes: That vase - that's something special. 'Fess up. You steal that from your Grandma Jean's house? I hope you left her that spoon collection. .... * Duane Jones: Daddy can I learn to shoot? I'm old enough. * Morgan Jones: Hell yes you're gonna learn. We gotta do it carefully, teach you to respect the weapon. * Rick Grimes: That's right. It's not a toy. You pull the trigger, you have to mean it. Always remember that, Duane. .... * Glenn Rhee: Hey you. Dumbass. Yeah, you in the tank. Cozy in there? .... * Morgan Jones: Hey, mister, you even know what's going on? * Rick Grimes: I woke up today in the hospital, came home, and that's all I know. * Morgan Jones: But you know about the dead people, right? * Rick Grimes: Yeah, I saw a lot of that. Out on the loading dock, piled in trucks. * Morgan Jones: No... Not the ones they put down. The ones they didn't. The walkers. Like the one I shot today. 'Cause he'd have ripped into you, tried to eat you, taken some flesh at least. Well, I guess if this is the first you're hearing it, I know how it must sound... .... * Morgan Jones: Listen, one thing. They may not seem like much one at a time, but in a group all riled up and hungry... Man, you watch your ass. .... * Morgan Jones: She, um... She died in the other room on that bed in there. There was nothing I... I could do about it. That fever, man. Her skin gave off heat like a furnace. I should've... I should've put her down, man. I should've put her down. I know that, but I... You know what? I just didn't have it in me. She's the mother of my child. .... * Rick Grimes: You shot that man today. * Morgan Jones: Man? * Duane Jones: That weren't no man. * Morgan Jones: What the hell was that out of your mouth just now? * Duane Jones: It wasn't a man. * Rick Grimes: You shot him in the street out front, a man. * Morgan Jones: Friend, you need glasses. It was a walker. Come on. Sit down, before you fall down. Crew * Robert Kirkman - Executive producer * David Alpert - Executive producer * Charles H. Eglee - Executive producer * Gale Anne Hurd - Executive producer * Frank Darabont - Executive producer * David Tattersall - Director of photography * Gregory Melton - Production designer * Hunter M. Via - Editor * Bear McCreary - Composer * Greg Nicotero - Consulting producer * Adam Fierro - Consulting producer * Jack LoGiudice - Co-executive producer * Tom Luse - Producer * Denise Huth - Producer * Skip Schoolnik - Associate producer See also External Links * * * * * * * * Footnotes References 2010; Amy; Atlanta; Carl Grimes; Cascade Palmetto Highway; Colt M1911A1; Colt Python; Dale Horvath; Deputy; Duane Jones; Gunshot victims; Harrison Memorial Hospital; Jenny Jones; King County; King County Sheriff's Office; Lam Kendal; Leon Basset; Linden County; Lori Grimes; Morgan Jones; Mossberg 500; Mossberg 590; Police station; Rick Grimes; Shane Walsh; Sheriff; Shot in the head; State Route 18; Zombie Category:Colt Python